


Something Else

by acciomediumdrip



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Blangst, Bullying, M/M, McKinley AU, Skank Kurt Hummel, badboy kurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 17:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1574156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acciomediumdrip/pseuds/acciomediumdrip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU meeting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Else

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the ever lovely blainersgirl on tumblr for betaeing.  
> Warnings: bullying, anxiety.

Blaine loiters in the gym. He pretends to daydream as he shuffles his feet and lags behind his classmates, stops to take a long drink at the water fountain, stoops down to tie his shoe.

Eating up time. And pretending theres a point to it, as if his dawdling is a clever survival plan that will make him invulnerable.

Except waiting until the rush of guys changing after gym class is the opposite of smart. And Blaine knows it. He also knows he’s too weak to resist the pull of putting something unpleasant off for just a few more minutes.

“Better hustle, Anderson.”

The gym teacher calls it from across the empty-cavernous gym, tossing dodge balls into a rolling crate. And of course he would ignore the string of taunts thrown at Blaine for the last forty minutes by his peers as freely as those insufferable red balls, choosing instead to call Blaine out on his _hustle_. Of course he would ignore the elbows jabbed into Blaine’s ribs that leave him reeling. The impact and touch racketing around his mind because _that night_ never leaves him and he has to re-teach himself to breathe every time it happens. Blaine knows people can see how off he is. They see it and ignore it, classmates, faculty - it makes no difference.

When Blaine’s carefully slow feet reach the locker room door and he can’t think of another single thing to delay him, he finally goes inside. The numbers inside are dwindling predictably and the locker room already has an empty, hollow ring to it. Lockers slam shut and locks spin - the sounds of exiting.

Blaine’s fingers shake over his combination; he’s being ridiculous and he knows it. 

No need for a shower, not when he’s done nothing but stand off to the side and pray that no one tries to help him participate. Thank God McKinley has a “show up and pass policy” when it comes to physical education. He just needs to get changed and get to class. Simple enough.

He swings his locker door open, and is just starting to dare think that he might get through another class without incident when the door slams swiftly shut again in front of his face - the sound ringing in his ears.

Blaine grits his jaw, but doesn’t look away from the blank red metal of his locker and tries to remember how to breathe.

“I’m just trying to get changed.”

“And what have you been doing for the last five minutes?” 

“Hiding behind corners to stare at us?”

“Getting your kicks for the day, huh, _creep_.”

There’s three of them and their little introduction ends in a round of raucous, bitter laughter that sends a thrill of horror down Blaine’s spine. Teenage posturing, fueled by testosterone and entitlement and fear - fear of being treated the way they’re treating Blaine. 

Blaine holds no illusions about how far this cocktail of unchecked emotions and lost restraint can go, and in the space of a second his only thought becomes survive this.

He should run. But there’s three of them, pinning him in against the bank of lockers. Blaine shifts his weight. His legs feel like jelly – empty and hollow, and he doesn’t trust himself to stand, let alone run. If he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything, they’ll get bored and leave him alone. Blaine hopes…

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

_Please go away please go away please please please._

“Not even going to try and deny it.”

“We know what you are.”

“You don’t got any business comin’ here.”

“Moonin’ over guys in the hallway.”

“Leering at us in the locker room.”

“It’s sick man.”

_Please leave me alone. Please just leave me alone_.

“Hey we’re talking to you!”

There’s a hand on his shoulder. Blaine gasps at the shocking grip and barely keeps his feet under him as he’s spun around - too fast, back pinned against the lockers and his head snaps back as he’s thrown against the metal with a slam. Blaine hears the impact and sees stars. His head gives off a series of painful throbs and his eyes snap shut and there’s _that_ sound … the sick impact of skin on skin, rippling and circling back in his mind, screams and thudding feet, concrete cold on his cheek and the world going black - until there’s a looping tide of it and Blaine can’t get lost there when he has to survive here. But there are tears wet on his cheek because he can’t do this. And why does he have to do this?

“I- I have to get to class,” Blaine mutters. His breaths are coming too fast and there’s nothing to them. No air in his chest. His brain feels disconnected from his lungs, like he’s unraveling from the inside out and there’s nothing that will keep him together. 

Blaine turns to open his locker again; grips the metal hard in his hand; feels it digging into his skin; and gets as far as pulling out his folded pile of clothes. 

If anything made sense they would just let him go. At this point they’re all going to be late for their next class and they already made him cry and that should be enough for some teenagers to feel reacquainted with their masculinity. But one of them grabs Blaine’s clothes out of his hands and Blaine knows these aren’t boys, not right now, right now they’re just monsters.

“Where do you find these queer clothes anyway? Is there a gay depot down by the mall?”

“Look, I just want to go to class,” Blaine says, trying to force the quiver out of his voice as if he could appeal to this boy’s sense of reason.

The boy dangles Blaine’s clothes out in front of him.

Blaine, _stupid stupid_ , makes a grab for them, anger welling up next to his fear, hard and fast and the boy _grins_ at him, cold and nasty.

“If you’re in such a hurry to get to class why don’t you go ahead and change? We’ll help you, huh?”

“Yeah strip and we’ll hand your precious clothes over.”

“Teach you a lesson, so you know how it feels, the way you’re always leering at us.”

Blaine can feel his breathing hitch up - drowning on air now. He skips ten steps past panic and lands right at the cusp of hyperventilating. He has the words in his head, the _right_ ones. Panic attack, too much adrenaline, too much oxygen, his body trying to flee and rev up for a fight at the same time. He’s not going to faint. People don’t _actually_ faint like this he tells himself. But the words are just words when he can _feel_ the world closing in on him.

He’s losing it. He’s going to lose it. The panic ripping through his system will destroy him. That or these monsters. Blaine sees it in his head, a nightmare flashbulb vision of himself naked in a pool of blood, a nervous chuckle of a maladjusted teenager over him as he closes his eyes. Blaine’s heart gives a lurch in his chest and surely his panic will kill him first. It’s not supposed to be like this.

There’s a hand at the waistband of Blaine’s gym shorts and he screams, jerks out of range only to find a hand bunched in his t-shirt. He shoves blindly, nails digging at flesh and the panic is a growing, hard thing in his chest, breathing down his neck and waiting to overtake him completely.

“Please stop please stop please.”

Something changes in the hot humid air of the locker room. There’s a current that cuts through the haughty, ugly, sneering violence of his peers. And all at once they become aware of someone else; another set of eyes watching them and this one matters, this one _cares_.

There’s a boy standing at the end of the row of lockers, arms clenched tight around his chest, his brow furrowed in anger. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t speak, he’s a force of silent _watching _. He hasn’t technically done a thing but he has tilted everything - knocked the power balance right off its axis, just by being so very present.__

Blaine takes a short breath, then lets it out so slowly it hurts, does it again. His finger finds the inside of his wrist, a knee-jerk reaction but he has to check, just to be sure - finds a beat there, hammering through tender skin. Counts them out in time to his carefully measured breath. 

“What do _you_ want, Kurt?”

Kurt. 

Kurt still doesn’t speak, doesn’t move except to cock his head at Blaine’s attackers, waiting for an explanation with that same hard look of unfathomable anger. Blaine has seen him in the halls a couple of time … aloof and coldly untouchable, _handsome_ and straight - probably. But he’s here, doing this and that alone makes this Kurt something else entirely.

The silence stretches on and on until Blaine registers the awkwardness. His attackers shuffle and huff until the silence finally becomes too much for them.

“Fucking queers.” 

The eloquent muttering breaks the silence. There’s a last shove to Blaine’s chest that leaves him gasping all over again and then they’re shuffling out of the locker room.

For several minutes, all Blaine thinks about is breathing. Seven seconds in and eleven slow seconds out that he can barely manage. He hunches down to the floor, fingers splayed out in front of him and his head tipped forward, breathing and reminding himself he’s fine, he’s whole. It still feels like he’s falling apart at the molecular level. Frayed. He still feels hands on him, the sounds of impact still ring through his head … the memory and the shock of fresh aggression. Blaine fights through it, breathes through it, until he’s calm enough to feel self-conscious about the boy whose eyes on him make all the difference.

“Are you alright?”

There’s a headache throbbing behind Blaine’s eyes and he feels as though he’s just run a marathon but there’s a blip of pride nestled deep inside that he managed to pull himself back from the edge of hysterics. It’s getting easier and its because he makes it so himself.

Blaine swivels his face up to meet the boy’s eyes - they give the appearance of calm and concern but Blaine can see the signs underneath - worried and nervous and not-sure-what-to-do. Kurt fiddles with the hem of his repurposed bomber jacket. Flicks his gaze down to his own heavy-booted feet, then back to Blaine.

“Do you want me to call someone?”

“I’ll be fine in a minute.”

Kurt stays and Blaine wonders how his presence can mean so much.

Blaine leans back against the locker his legs sprawled in front of him. “I’m Blaine, by the way”

Kurt takes this as an invitation to sit across from him, his torn-denim clad leg landing just inches from Blaine's knobby bare knees and Blaine cane _feel_ how close they are.

“Kurt.”

And _oh_. Blaine can still feel it. That current or stillness that Kurt had brought; or maybe this was what it felt like to have someone see you, to have someone see you and care. Or maybe this was just Kurt. The something else. “Hi.”

Blaine gets a smile for that, and it changes the way Kurt looks. He is more than handsome; he’s nothing short of stunning. Storm-sea eyes that are warm with concern mingled with a trace of lingering anger. His face framed in carefully styled chestnut hair, twin piercings under his bottom lip that have the simultaneous effect of making him look steely-rugged, and, with his round baby face, even younger than he probably is.

“Hi there,” Kurt says around his smile.

It’s as close as they’re going to get to an unspoken agreement to ignore the particulars of their introduction.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” Kurt asks.

“Beginning of the semester.” A few weeks. It feels like longer.

“Have you been to Barney’s?”

Its not the question Blaine expects and he blinks blankly before shaking his head.

“How do you feel about skipping eighth period for the most delicious milkshake you will ever consume?”

Blaine grins and feels something melt between them.


End file.
